A very common question we receive is reflected in a question from a podcast listener named

Ruth, who asked this.

Pastor John, how should we respond when LGBT friends want us to refer to them by a different

opposite gender name?

Like when a female asks everyone to now call her by a male name, should we call them

by that male name?

Samantha likewise asks this in light of the Bruce Jenner interview and other celebrities

pushing the LGBT agenda.

How should a Christian treat a person who identifies under one of these labels?

Should I treat a transgender person as the gender they choose or the one they were born

with?

Pastor John, help us with these questions.

Before I give three guidelines that I thought of, that would guide behavior in specific

response to those questions.

I really do need to lay the foundations here because we're assuming some things that would

not be assumed by a lot of people and we need to give an account for why we assume them.

I'm going to assume, I'm going to try to argue for now, biblically, that gender even

though the world considers it distinct from sex, for the Christian should be in sync with

the biological genetic sex and there are Biblical reasons for that.

Manhood and womanhood are understood and intended in the Bible.

That is intended by God, our creator, as biologically or genetically, of course the Biblical authors

didn't know anything about genetics, but I'm throwing it in because we do and it's in

...